Singularly Ambiguous
By Essay Issue 40
SAMUEL Johnson, the great eighteenth-century critic, moralist, and wit, once said of the American revolutionaries: “How is it that the loudest yelps for liberty come from the holders of slaves?” I don’t know what Johnson’s friend, Edmund Burke—a proponent of American independence—said in response to this, but I rather hope it was: “Touché.” While I…
Read MoreCurrent Event
By Essay Issue 45
HE SAID he never intended to found anything, and I believe him. But he had a gift for friendship. When his funeral mass was celebrated in Milan last month, thirty thousand of his companions were there. The principal celebrant, Cardinal Ratzinger, delivered a message from another friend, Karol Wojtyla. It may be a truism to…
Read MorePoetic Justice
By Essay Issue 74
The following is adapted from an address given at the Wild Goose Festival in Corvallis, Oregon, on September 1, 2012. BEFORE I CAME DOWN here to deliver this talk on how art and social justice should—and shouldn’t—mix, I posted on Facebook that I was preparing by reading the works of various writers. One commenter singled…
Read MoreEx Nihilo, Then Us
By Poetry Issue 83
From nothing God made everything, they said. Nothing plus God is nothing we said. But with something to work with, look what we’ve done. God said, you’d better and you’d better not, they said. And sometimes it looks like you have when you shouldn’t. Eyewash, we said, it’s just how we are, honeyed self-interest in…
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